Corona Virus in the Moment

We are about two weeks into the Corona virus lock-down, and while we have far surpassed my initial estimates of 50K infections and 1K deaths, we are still nowhere near the millions that certain people were predicting.  Some people want to lift the restrictions, while others want to tighten them,  Some are convinced it will eventually infect nearly everyone, and we are just slowing it down.  But viewing the progress in foreign countries, whether Europe or Asia, indicates that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, as things seem to be improving there.  Auburn never took the shelter in place orders as seriously as our more densely developed neighbors, but so far seems no worse for the wear.  I am much more concerned about the precedents set by enforcing those orders than I am about the spread of the virus, but both are potential problems, that have the possibility of getting way out of hand.

Personally, I have been focused on installing my own solar panel system for the last few weeks, but now that it is up and running, I will have a bit more time on my hands to try to use wisely while stuck at home.  And I am fortunate enough to have the resources to stay home for the time being, and just make preparations for the future, as we all try to determine what that will look like.  I still think is in likely that things will improve within a month, but I am planning for the eventuality that it does not.  The garden becomes the next focus, as things warm up, as an alternate source of food.  Might be time to expand the chicken flock as well, since that has been an under utilized resource.  But those things are longer term investments, that we have to make it through the short term in order to benefit from.

Current totals are 270K infection and 7K deaths.  At this point I think we may see 1M infections, and 50K deaths, but it is hard to know who to trust, as both the media and the government are incentivized to exaggerate the extent of the issue.  It will be interesting to see with hindsight how many people had minor infections early on, without realizing it.  Lots more people think they have COVID-19 than actually do (<80% of tests are negative) and lots of other people thing they have already had it.  It will be really interesting to see the blood test results when searching for anti-bodies in a random selection of the population.